


baby, take all of me

by Aramley



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-11
Updated: 2010-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1930s ganster au (based on <i>Public Enemies</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	baby, take all of me

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://aramleys-words.livejournal.com/11699.html).

Given time and opportunity enough, a man's reputation will come to gloss even his less fearsome qualities, and so when Roger excuses himself from the table to weave a slow, deliberate path through the languid crowds of dancers his associates merely glance amongst themselves with wry indulgence; a man who can empty a bank vault in a minute forty, who eludes the Bureau as though they were children playing stick-up, may indulge whatever proclivities he happens to possess.

The young man at the bar - the object of Roger's attention - watches Roger's approach with dark eyes; like recognising like. He affects ease, but it sits on him as ill as the fit of his suit, and yet cheap suit and false confidence serve only to hint at other, concealed charms. Roger smiles, sharp. The man at the bar swallows.

There's nothing studied about Roger's confidence when he eases in to lean his forearms against the gleaming oak bar. He adjusts his cuffs and the cufflinks gleam dull gold. The singer eases from one song into the next, smoky and sweet, _all of me, why not take all of me?_

"Buy you a drink?" he says, without preamble.

The start of something like a smile curves tentatively at the corner of the other man's mouth. "Sure," he says.

"What'll it be?"

The carefully contrived self-confidence falters for a beat. "I have what you have."

Roger smothers a smile. He is so perfect, this one.

"What's your name?"

"Rafael."

"Italian?"

A quick negative movement. "Spanish." Roger is relieved. He's not sure he'd tangle with Chicago Italians even for this boy, with all his dark-eyed promise.

The bartender slides their drinks over and Roger pays with a crisp fifty, and tells him to keep the change. He offers one tumbler to Rafael, and Rafael takes it gingerly enough that their fingers don't brush.

"Cheers," says Roger, raising his own glass.

"Cheers," says Rafael. He tips the rim of his glass against Roger's, and then Roger watches as Rafa brings the drink to his lips, pausing to sniff warily at it before he takes his first delicate sip.

"What do you do, Rafael?"

"I work in a grocery store," Rafael says, nose still wrinkling adorably from the drink. "What do you do?"

"Me," Roger says. "I work in banks."

His English too imperfect to pick up on the oddness of the phrasing, Rafael nods quiet acceptance of this. Roger is more charmed than he ought to be.

The song ends on a velvety quaver that is subsumed into a scatter of applause.

"It's sort of crowded in here, don't you think?" Roger says, and Rafael might be inexperienced, sure, but he's not so green he doesn't know an offer when he hears it.

"Yes," he says.

The curve of Roger's smile widens a fraction. "You want to find somewhere a little quieter?"

Rafael finishes his drink with one resolute swallow. "Yes."

-

Outside a chill drizzle is falling. Roger's expensive coat keeps out the damp adn the insidious cold, but Rafael hunches miserably in his cheaper, thinner one, hands plunged deep into the pockets. If Rafael were a girl, Roger would shrug gallantly out of his own coat and drape it around her shoulders, walk her down the street with a proud, proprietary arm around her inviting the admiring, envious stares of passers-by. But that's not how it works for men like them. Roger allows himself this: he reaches over and turns up Rafael's collar, affectionate although he's careful not to linger, and says, "Don't worry, it isn't far."

Roger lives outside society and holds himself exempt from its strictures and sheepish morality; yet even he in his outlaw state must give the outward appearance of adherence, if he wishes to retain his freedoms (and there are prison guards nursing their wounds that will attest to that). So Roger will wear tailored expensive suits and tip his hat to ladies and keep a careful distance between himself and Rafael as they walk through the dank Chicago streets past the people who have no idea, no idea that the suits are bought with bank vault fifties and that in a little while Roger will have this beautiful thing that ladies' eyes follow as they pass stretched out bare and begging in his bed.

He smiles.

-

The room is cheap and shabby, like the apartment block it belongs to, but Rafael doesn't seem to notice or, if he does, to care much about the bedframe and mattress marooned on the bare, chipped wood floor, the contrast between it and Roger's fine wool coat and gleaming cufflinks.

Roger reaches over impusively to cup the back of Rafael's neck with one hand. He just rests it there, and Rafael turns slowly into it, so that they're facing each other in the dark and Roger's hand brackets one side of the strong column of his throat, his doubletime pulse beating against the pad of Roger's thumb.

"You could swing to that," he says, absent and not unkind, and Rafael smiles, and swallows. Roger presses down with his thumb to feel the movement of it, faltering and resolute at the same time.

"Come here," he says, and Rafael moves obediently closer. Roger moves his hand in a slow caress from Rafa's throat to spread possessively across the space between his shoulderblades, spanning the warm depression between the blunted bones. There's muscle there, through the thin fabric of the cheap suit.

"Come here," Roger says again. Rafa steps close enough to kiss. His mouth is warm and sure.

"You've done this before," Roger says, but Rafa's mouth is inscrutable and irresistible.

Rafa's jacket puddles to the floor. His tie slips away with a whispering sigh. Roger is unbuttoning the shirt when he puts his mouth to the exposed line of a collarbone and says, "Let me tell you something."

Rafa puts his mouth to Roger's ear and says, "Alright," stuttering with his sharp, shallow breathing.

Roger says, "I rob banks."

Rafa stills, but doesn't pull away. "Why you tell me this?"

"Now you know everything about me," Roger says, with his fingers still working over the small buttons, one by one.

"You no know me. You meet me only tonight."

The last button gives way and Rafael's shirt falls open. The muscles of his stomach might have belonged to some bronzed Athenian victor, and they flutter deliciously under Roger's touch.

"I know you," he says, trailing his fingers down to curves into the waistband of Rafa's trousers. He smiles when Rafael's breath stutters in a shap, gasping sound. "I know everything worth knowing."

-

Tucked close to Roger's body, Rafael talks about his childhood in Spain, an impressionistic splash of fishing boats and dazzling water and the tanned wiry forearms of uncles hauling nets. He talks about Chicago, the cold and the wet and the starless nights, and when he says this he has a miserable, wet-kitten look, and Roger rubs his arms and back consolingly, as though he can impart with his hands what the thin February sun can't.

"It's alright," he says, as Rafa turns his face against Roger's shoulder in artless affection. "You've got me now. I'll take care of you."

It's unfamiliar, this protective urge. Cash is transient; Roger doesn't deal in permanence. Yet he thinks he understands for the first time the lengths to which a man might go for precious enough a thing.


End file.
